TCEC 28 superfinal book

The TCEC 28 superfinal book was made by Jeroen Noomen in cooperation with Windfishballad and Kittenkaboodle. The selected 50 opening lines are from famous Grandmasters of the past and from Stefan Pohl's UHO - or Unbalanced Human Openings (for more information: https://www.sp-cc.de/uho_2024.htm). 

To select the lines I had help from Windfishballad, who used a special script that analysed hundreds of lines for me. We used Kittenkaboodle's superfast PC on 512 threads to have each possible superfinal candidate opening analysed for around 7-10 minutes by both Stockfish and Leela. With the information gathered I selected the lines with the best exits, preferably with as low as possible PV agreement. I also included a few lines where there was quite a big difference in exit evaluation.

The book contains lines from games of the great chessplayers of the past and today. Like Steinitz, Blackburne, Zukertort, Nimzowitsch, Bronstein, Petrosian, Timman, Miles, Ljubojevic, Anand, Judit Polgar, Carlsen and many others. Also games of lesser known grandmasters are in the mix.

Average length of the lines is 7.96 moves, which is somewhat lower than previous superfinal books. As usual the lines have a very high bias to avoid a huge number of uninteresting draws. Typically the book exits are around 1.00, which means they are on the edge of a win and a draw. The great majority of the lines have an exit evaluation  between 0.90 and 1.10. Please note that the real book exits under TCEC playing conditions may vary with my own exits due to newer Stockfish and Leela versions, shorter or longer thinking time and several other factors as well.

Black advantage: there are two lines that start with a black advantage, increasing the chance of a black win.

Higher/lower book exits: the lines were randomly put into the book, if there is a somewhat lower exit it will always be followed by higher exits.


ECO code distribution

ECO A: 10 lines

ECO B: 18 lines

ECO C: 7 lines

ECO D: 2 lines

ECO E: 13 lines

Move length distribution

5 moves: 2 lines

6 moves: 7 lines

7 moves: 4 lines

8 moves: 25 lines

9 moves: 7 lines

10 moves: 4 lines
> 10 moves: 1 line